The Artist's Road Painting the World's Beautiful Places

Soaring

A Step-by-Step Watercolor Demonstration

  
      We have found that the payoffs for the traveling artist are large and long-lasting. Along with our on-site paintings, we always gather a mountain of reference materials—sketches, drawings and photographs, which we can develop into studio paintings later. We often have unexpected adventures and meet fascinating people. Some of those encounters and adventures we have shared with you on The Artist’s Road.

   When we travel, especially in Europe, there is always more to take in than we can paint at any one time. We make quick studies in our sketchbooks or on small oil panels as often as we can. For the rest, we must use the camera. Knowing what the camera will and won’t do visually is of utmost importance to getting the most out of our travel time.

   This demonstration illustrates how I recreated my original impression of a scene from a photograph and a small sketch. In this instance, many years have passed, but that is not an obstacle. I can look at the photo I took and realize what qualities in the image are not there. The photo is for detail and general light and color only. The purpose of this demonstration is not so much to show watercolor strokes or techniques, but to show how I recapture inspiration and build a successful painting.

   In the studio, I use a  Masterson Palette. I paint only on Arches watercolor paper, either a block of 140# cold press as shown, or a sheet of 300# cold press. I love the surface and behavior of Arches. Over the last forty years we have become good friends. To have plenty of water on hand, I cut open a heavy plastic 64 oz. laundry soap bottle and use that for my rinse water. It is helpful also to have a squirt bottle nearby to create pools of color or refill my palette.
 

   My palette colors are laid out like a color wheel—from warm to cool to make things easy. In its simplest form, I use a split-primary system of a warm and cool of each primary color. Two reds, two yellows, two blues, plus the earth colors of Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber. For speed, on large sheets of paper, I often add pre-mixed secondaries like Sap Green or Viridian or a Violet. Some paintings require extra special colors, so those are in there also, but may not be needed. For very dark passages I like to use Prussian Blue mixed either warm or cool. I always like to try new colors. I don’t want my palette to be too predictable, so lately I have been using Indian Yellow. You can see the effect of that color in this painting right off the bat. The most important thing about watercolor is to buy the very best professional grade colors, or all the efforts will not produce good results. Student grade is a waste of time and money. Same goes for paper.
  

   When it comes to brushes, I also buy professional equipment. I store my brushes in a strong but lightweight Monaco Silver Brush case as shown. I like this type of case because the brushes I use most often are out on the left and held snug by elastic bands, while my other spares and special-use brushes are in the zippered side. On the right of that is my clutch pencil, kneaded eraser, Siberian squirrel-hair mop, sea sponge and a very fine, sharp Kafka #6 liner with its own plastic retainer. For my main go-to brushes, I love the Richeson synthetic series 9000, size 20. I keep two of those at the ready. After those, Richeson 1”, 3/4” and 1/2” flats, a Royal Langnickel 1” oval sky wash, a Loew-Cornell series 7020 round, size 14 and a Richeson series 7000 round, size 12, complete my regular set. I try new types of brushes all the time, but it is rare when one exceeds the performance of these. For in-depth information about watercolor brushes, see: Watercolor Brushes - The Real 411.

My Subject

Photo of the Dordogne River from Domme

   This painting is my attempt to express the profound beauty and soul-stirring light which fills the valley of the Dordogne River, France, as seen from the hilltop village of Domme. See: A Painting Trip to the Dordogne Valley.  This is one of those places in the world which are visually stunning and culturally ancient. There are famous caves nearby where the first artists used charcoal and ochres to draw the world around them over 40,000 years ago! It is hard to describe the feeling one has standing at an overlook in Domme, looking down upon the fields and hills as the sun fills the valley with radiance. It was the “Golden Hour”—7 pm, on a spring evening and the daily flights of hot air balloons were just taking off. Magical!

   Working from my iPad photo and sketch, I lightly drew my cartoon image on my Arches 12 x 16” block. I use an HB lead for this because it is soft enough not to dent the paper but hard enough not to smear graphite all over the paper. Erasures, if any, are made with the non-abrasive kneaded eraser, which can also erase simply by pressure-lifting the graphite, rather than by rubbing. I draw only what I need to guide me along—no details.

 
   I generally prefer to work light to dark. My focal point in this painting is the light on the river. This is where I start painting. The overall color behind most of the foreground and the sky is a warm yellow. For this first wash I decided to use the Indian Yellow. Indian Yellow is a new formulation of an old pigment. In its contemporary form, it is wonderfully intense and transparent. The color varies with the amount of water, so one can get almost a Cadmium Yellow at the light end to an Orange on the dark end. Wonderful!

   As soon as the Indian Yellow was dry, I painted in the hills on the horizon wet into wet with Cerulean Blue. Each of these shapes is a classic graded wash, top to bottom, painted one at a time. Moving forward in space, I glazed a thin wash of Sap Green mixed with Indian Yellow over the low hills, trees and fields.

   After that wash was completely dry, I began to finish the background by introducing some Cobalt into the light green hills, glazing that transparent wash over the Indian Yellow/Sap Green to create the soft greens. The darker blue hills on the right had a bit of Prussian Blue added to them. I painted around the orange shape of the balloon. Working background to foreground, I then concentrated on the trees lining the river and that wonderful light effect of glare on the water and trees. This had to be perfectly executed to read correctly, so I worked a small area at a time, wet into wet, painting and lifting until it looked right. I took my time with this. Once done, I began to work out from the river and build forms in the landscape.

   Now that the hardest part was done—the glare of sun on water—I could relax into the rest of the landscape. It is important in any picture not to get caught up in rendering unnecessary or peripheral details—details which the camera always captures, but which the eye does not. I try to paint these wet into wet in a suggestive manner. Keeping them a bit out of focus also helps and creates a natural looking scene. I also took liberties with that violet color in the turned fields, which were a cool brown to black in my reference. Violet is a complement of yellow making it a good choice for color impact.

Soaring - The Finished Painting

   I realized while I was bringing the painting to a finish that the river needed a surface to complete the illusion of water. For this I used a wet into wet wash of Naples Yellow and Cerulean Blue. This also tied together the background and foreground so that the picture didn’t just run off the bottom of the page as it seems to in the previous image. The hot air balloon detail I kept small and almost unnoticeable on purpose. While it is ostensibly the subject of the title, "Soaring" also refers strongly to the feeling of the painting more than the fact of it. If the emotion comes through in our work, then it will be successful. No amount of technique or details can substitute for that.

Soaring                                       Watercolor                                       12 x 16"

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